Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of tables, figures and boxes
- Preface
- one Children’s and young people’s caring responsibilities within the family
- two HIV and the family
- three Reflexivity, methodology and ethics: the research process
- four Living with HIV and the effects on family life: parents’ narratives
- five Children’s and young people’s care work in households affected by HIV and AIDS
- six Resilience and impacts of care work for individual young people and their families
- seven Resilience and impacts of young people’s care work within the school and wider community
- eight The role of formal safety nets in building children’s and families’ resilience
- nine Global and local processes influencing young people’s caring roles in families affected by HIV and AIDS
- ten Responding to the support needs of children and young people caring for parents with HIV
- Bibliography
- Index
five - Children’s and young people’s care work in households affected by HIV and AIDS
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 January 2022
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of tables, figures and boxes
- Preface
- one Children’s and young people’s caring responsibilities within the family
- two HIV and the family
- three Reflexivity, methodology and ethics: the research process
- four Living with HIV and the effects on family life: parents’ narratives
- five Children’s and young people’s care work in households affected by HIV and AIDS
- six Resilience and impacts of care work for individual young people and their families
- seven Resilience and impacts of young people’s care work within the school and wider community
- eight The role of formal safety nets in building children’s and families’ resilience
- nine Global and local processes influencing young people’s caring roles in families affected by HIV and AIDS
- ten Responding to the support needs of children and young people caring for parents with HIV
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This chapter discusses young people's everyday caring responsibilities within households affected by HIV/AIDS in both the global North and South. As discussed in Chapter 1, research in the UK and other high-income countries as well as in Sub-Saharan Africa has demonstrated that young carers’ caring responsibilities do differ from other children's household responsibilities in both the North and the South in terms of the extent and nature of children's care work (Becker, 2007). The research in Tanzania and the UK further develops understandings of children's care work gained from research with children caring for parents with a range of mental and physical illness or impairments conducted predominantly in the North. Our findings provide an in-depth insight into the specific dimensions of children's care work in families affected by HIV/AIDS. In this chapter, we highlight similarities and differences between children's experiences within two divergent socioeconomic and welfare contexts. Drawing on young people's narratives, diaries, drawings and photographs of their daily routines and caring responsibilities, we discuss the range of support that children provide for their parents/relatives and explore gendered and temporal aspects of children's care work.
Young people's everyday caring responsibilities
Becker (2007) has suggested that children's caring responsibilities can be located along a continuum of care, as discussed in Chapter 1. This ranges from most children who are engaged in ‘routine’ levels and types of caregiving, including household chores, regardless of the health status of their parent/relative, to children who are engaged in substantial, regular and significant caregiving and who provide considerable help with household chores. Research from the UK, Australia, the US and Sub-Saharan Africa suggests that it is the wider range of household and caring tasks, and particularly involvement in the personal care of their parent/relative, as well as the frequency and time spent on these tasks that distinguishes the work of young carers from the usual household chores that young people do in the North and South (Becker, 2007).
In a large survey of young carers in the UK, Dearden and Becker (2004) categorised children's caring tasks in terms of domestic tasks; general care; emotional support; intimate care; childcare; and other.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Children Caring for Parents with HIV and AIDSGlobal Issues and Policy Responses, pp. 129 - 150Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2009